ruth901
After a tough process, the so-called gold bar process has come to a temporary end. The 52-year-old defendant was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
Hanau/Bad Soden-Salmünster – The 7th Large Criminal Chamber at the Hanau Regional Court chaired by Judge Dr. Renata Kohlheim saw it as proven that the woman from the Offenbach district had committed a serious robbery in conjunction with dangerous bodily harm on December 10, 2022.
52-year-old sentenced to several years in prison in the “gold bar trial”.
was a victim a 61-year-old from Bad Soden-Salmünster, into whom she had given knockout drops. The woman, who has been convicted several times, had denied all allegations until recently. Her defense attorney therefore called for acquittal. The representative of the prosecution was different: Prosecutor Louise Rettweiler considered a prison sentence of four years and eight months to be appropriate. The process was tough, because the defendant had repeatedly cited another ailment as the reason why she could not appear in court. The judgment is not yet legally binding.
The defendant and the injured party met via an online dating platform and first had dinner in the victim's apartment on the evening of the crime and later watched television. The defendant then asked the man to run a bath. During his brief absence, she dribbled a sleeping pill and a sedative into the victim's glass of Spanish vanilla liqueur that was standing on the living room table. After the injured party returned, she toasted him. He took the drink unsuspectingly. Shortly afterwards he is said to have felt very tired and ultimately lost consciousness.
According to the prosecutor, the defendant then went into his bedroom and took the gold bars weighing 1.4 kilograms with a total value of almost 77,000 euros at the time and left the apartment. The spa town resident only came to later. According to Rettweiler's assessment, in late summer 2022, the 52-year-old thought about how she could get money or valuables from a “naive and wealthy” man. After she placed an ad online, the 61-year-old from the spa town got in touch. She made him believe that she was having a romantic relationship.
Prosecutors believed the chain of evidence against the defendant was conclusive
The prosecutor referred to the defendant's extensive criminal record, which contains entries for, for example, numerous frauds, false suspicions and theft. One entry from 2011 particularly stands out. At that time, she stole 12,000 euros from an older man when he also went to the bathroom. Rettweiler described the current crime as “extremely deceitful” and ruthless because the victim lost his pension. The gold bars have not resurfaced to this day.
The public prosecutor considered the chain of evidence to be conclusive, especially since the woman's cell phone was logged into the radio cell in the spa town at the time of the crime. Furthermore, the defendant repeatedly presented details in defense that did not stand up to scrutiny. The defense attorney described her client as credible and innocent. However, she considered the victim's behavior to be questionable.
It is therefore incomprehensible why he kept the gold bars in the bedroom instead of taking them to the bank. Furthermore, it has not been proven that the precious metal was actually in the cupboard that evening. Apparently there were often strangers in the apartment, as the 61-year-old offered strangers nude photography within his four walls. The victim may have mixed the drug cocktail himself after the 52-year-old denied his desire for sex. Her client was “not criminally sophisticated enough” to commit such an act.
The defendant, who this time brought her frail mother with her into the courtroom, gave her final statement in tears. She had had a hard enough time with five failed marriages and was now looking for a man who would go through life with her. (ls)
